Friday, March 25, 2011

I walked around him to check on dinner in the oven. As I passed by I gave him my no trespassing look but did not say anything. When dinner and the Kitchen cleanup were both over Blowfish said,

" It's not like you to be so quiet so what's up? is Mom worse? client orders didn't come? Mermaid came off a horse?"

I stopped what I was doing to turn and say, " Mom is still waiting on God, clients are all fine, Mermaid is fine." Then I left the room. Not too much time passed before Blowfish arrived at my side in the Laundry Room where I was folding yet another load of stuff.

" Are you out of chocolate? I could make an emergency trip."

" Blowfish, go facebook, or game or read or watch the talking heads yell at each other. I'm busy".

" Fishy, I been around a while now and if there is one thing I have learned about you it's that you do laundry, lots of it, when you are upset about things. I have never seen you do this much laundry before. Fact is, I don't think I've ever seen this laundry before".

" Leave me be Blowfish, leave me be".

He is right. When I cannot put things in order in an emotional/psychological venue I am compelled to as much physical order as possible. I organize closets, the kitchen, the garage, the attic or; if I just cannot take the time in one big chuck for those larger projects ,then I do laundry. When it's very bad I take everything out of all the linen closets ( we have 6) and wash it all.

When my mother was seeking to resolve the unresolved she did mending. With all us kids there was always plenty to do. She would mend anything. Beloved remnants of a child's favorite blankie or a dogs favorite toy. She mended doll clothes and re-hemmed kitchen towels. Mama loved sewing so if there was no actual mending to be done she would make something. She often designed what she made, drafting patterns on the paper grocer's bags. One summer at the beach, Mama had a bout with anxiety. There was no mending in sight. Maybe not even a sewing kit for just tightening up buttons on shirts.
It's a wonder she didn't set the place on fire as I think she had a cigarette going in every room. Eventually she came out to the porch and sat down to work on a jig saw puzzle with us kids.

That's the other thing I still do when I cannot get to a peaceful place in my spirit. There is something therapeutic about puzzles. You take fragments and make something good whole again. It is symbolic but there is something in this activity which quiets the anxiety.

So what do you do? Punch bags? Jog for miles? Scream at squirrels? Pull weeds?

One of my friends says you can always judge her status by looking at her pantry.
She swears a neat, orderly

pantry at her house is an indication of full blown psychosis.
Her children confirm. If they come home, fling open the larder doors and encounter order they call friends, aunts,uncles, grands or preachers to beg to be adopted starting immediately. During these phases her husband spends hours hitting his grocery cart of tennis balls against the garage wall. The "all clear" in their house is a packed, jumbled pantry.

So , please, tell Fishy what is your 'go to' activity when your world is a bit out of balance and there is not a single thing that can be done to set things to right? For those times when you become knowledgeable about what it actually means " to endure". When you have done all you can do but cannot,cannot,
fix you angst ?

Thursday, March 10, 2011

On Wednesday I received an e-mail from Amazon.com offering me a discount on a product.

On Monday I had been researching numerous sources for this product for a client. I had not been sourcing this item at Amazon.com. Well. I am not a techie but does this mean the search engines I use collect and disburse data on my searches and then sells that data to others? A few hours later I received an e-mail from Overstock.com offering me a discount on the same type of product. Hummmm.
Does that mean if I delete, rather than respond to the Amazon mail they sell the data assuming they will not be losing my business so are selling "old" or "dated" or lesser probability of a sale data to others?
Before the day was over I had 6 e-mail offers for products I had researched on Monday.

It made me extremely glad I have declined all online banking offers.
I think this is false security.

I went to a grocery store on Monday in another city.
I went to that particular store because I had done an online search for a " local source" which inventories salt free baking powder. Something which cannot be bought within 35 miles of the Pond. It is the only item I purchased. I paid by debit card. I received a receipt for the purchase and then I was handed several coupons for other food items I buy regularly at my local grocers. They are not necessarily salt-free or special dietary foods and they were not coupons for items I had researched online. They were coupons for things I had bought at my local grocers, using that same debitcard, on Sunday. The realization made the Twilight Zone theme song play in my head. And it made me queasy.

But it got worse.
Wednesday afternoon I received snail mail addressed to me. Sort of.
It was addressed to my christian first name and my "Fishy" surname.
The mail was a promotion for a business selling products relative to an
online tutorial I had watched about a particular painting technique.
The Twilight Zone music played a lot louder. It's not my favorite tune.

Did I forfeit all privacy by having Google mail boxes and Google blogspots or a Google business listing for FishyDesigns? By using Google's search engine? I have avoided the social networks. No facebooking for self or business, no twitter, no active LinkedIn. I , like every other businessperson, need to have an internet presence for my business. But how do I do this without inviting serious risks to privacy?

I do have a PayPal account and have bought online with a credit card.
But. I have a single, ceilinged card I use for these purposes. I set this up to limit risks.
Or so I thought. Actually, I think all money transactions have been safe. Data is different.
Data has been collected, categorized, disbursed.
My banking friends tell me it is riskier to write checks because once a check is in hand the
bank routing codes and all other data are right there. A computer they say, will not use data for gain while an immoral human will.

So how do I secure my data?
Is it possible?
I am not a techie .
If I am doing something stupid, please, please tell me and help me!
Is there is a way to prevent Google from selling data about me if I use Google?
How exactly can I do anything about data collected from where I use my debit card?
I doubt I can impact the integrity of employees of firms who receive checks from me.

This is not Lucy and Ethel listening in on Ricky's calls and, it isn't funny.

If I were a billionaire, looking for a secure investment for my lucre, I would launch an internet empire with untraceable searching, debit or credit purchasing and cloud data storage capabilities for one flat rate per year. It probably already exists. Of course there are also sights which offer you the tools to "spy" or "track" those who believe they are searching invisibly. Can you hear the music too?
But wait ! There is more! Did you know you can now sign up to have your house wired for Google ?
What they call " Smart TV" where you can search the net from your TV? Want to know how?
Just download the Mobile Code reader by texting APP to 332211.

About Me

A friendly fish pond where we exchange stories about your splashes and mine. We might touch a bit on what's happening in bigger ponds here in there but mostly it's about life in these warm Southern waters.